Eliminating main halyard shackle?

Quick question...
I had a serious racer buddy show me a method of attaching the main halyard without the use of a shackle by starting through the main hole in the head and weaving it around through the others and ending with a stopper knot (such as an 8). He said this was a new move in the greater racing community to deal with chafe (ie. when it starts to chafe badly where it enters the mast, cut that part off and just use the "new" end) Anybody heard of this? Thoughts?
Chris

Sure..

This is seen more and more these days-not sure how critical it is for a cruiser, though-you need to be 100% certain you did it correctly, becuase if it slips-you lose the whole thing inside the mast.

On a boat like yours, I would certainly keep an eye on chafe at that point (where it goes over the halyards sheave). One thing you can do, is have 2 main halyard "positions"-about 3" apart, and alternate them with each sailing day-this will double the life of the halyard at that point, and you could even use a cunningham on the days you are using the lower position if it is windy enough to need more luff tension. This is similar to the technique I described for pasaagemaking-where you "excercise" the halyards every 6-8 hours by raising and lowering them a few inches to keep the chafe from happening at one spot.

The biggest advantage of the no shackle method is less weight aloft-If you stayed with the shackle and noticed it was beginning to chafe through, you can do the same thing as them-just take the halyard out (using a messenger/tag line), and cut and re-splice it-or have it done. If nobody near by can do this splice, you can even use a bowline to tie it-the halyard should have enough reserve strength for this..

Hope this is useful./.
Cheers,
S

If chafe is your concern....

If chafe is your concern, you might do what some long distance cruisers do. That is, attach the halyard shackle to the halyard with a buntline hitch, rather than a splice. This is a very secure and compact knot, that allows you to replace the bitter end of the halyard when it chafes at the sheave without re-doing a splice.

The down side would be if you are using the new high modulus synthetics, that don't take well to knots and lose too much of their strength.

Thanks...

Now if I could just convince my wife (she's a pretty conservative sailor) that this is a good idea... it seems brilliant to me: multiple crosses through the head reduce the strain at each, no shackle to mess with, no worries about "I have to replace my brand new halyard due to chafe". I'm not really concerned with the weight aloft (I actually think that the amount of line used to do this would be about the same as a shackle unless you had stripped the cover off your halyard or something).

Seth, any thoughts on a good pattern to use for the weave to make sure it's right? I'm assuming that they all start with the hole that you'd put a shackle on...

Steve,
I found that hitch in my knot book one time and have started using it on my spin halyard (lots of chafe getting over the RF drum) since it is suggested to hold better in bouncy conditions than a bowline. Great advice!

I am very interested. Pics?

Chris,

Yes, I've seen this approach before. I was shown it at Sailing Supply in San Diego. It has the added benefit of allowing the head to be raised that extra bit.